About an hour away from the farm I asked my trainer if she had loaded her english saddle in the trailer. I asked this as I had remembered that I had forgotten to since I had been using it to practice equitation and needed to show in it as I had not purchased my own saddle yet. The answer was no. We pulled off at the next exit just to double check, and there was no saddle. The quickly contemplated what to do; do we just continue our trip and I borrow one of the other english saddles as my trainer wasn't planning on showing english at all. Since my SO had dropped me off at the barn, I called him to see if he would be willing to drive back to the barn and meet us half way. He wasn't happy about this, but he agreed anyway.
We arrive in Tampa late that evening, unload the horses & tack, find a late night spot to eat dinner and check into the hotel.
The show didn't start until Sunday, so it gave us a full day to get the horses used to the show grounds and ready to show the next day. My trainer and some of her clients particularly liked attending this circuit since it is a nice get away from the cold weather we are used to that time of year. Well of course our arrive to Florida brought record low temperatures as well, isn't that nice!
The circuit didn't go as well as I would of hoped. Woody had a lot of extra energy or something up his butt the whole time in Tampa. I spent many hours lunging him so the monsters in and out of the ring wouldn't get him!! In showmanship he blew me off and paid more attention to what was going on outside of the ring. So it was determined that we would have to arrive extra early those mornings so my trainer could lunge him while I got myself dressed and get him in the ring by himself. It paid off in the long run and Woody redeemed himself the last day of showmanship.
Our debut in equitation didn't go over too well either. The first day Woody decided he didn't want to do the turn on the forehand like we had been practicing. But like showmanship, by the end of the week he got better and we had a pretty good go that earned us a second under one of the judges.
We had some decent goes in western pleasure and finished up with a good go for us, but there were some really nice horses and we placed were we should have.
In horsemanship we actually started out good and got bad! I placed right out of the points the first day under one of the judges. They randomly gave away a show headstall for 4th or 5th place one of the days, which I ended up winning! Horsemanship was on the last day and Woody was mentally done. He blew me off during the pattern again, so I just ended up schooling him the rest of the pattern.
Trail went from okay to bad to okay again. My trainer showed him in the Green & Junior before my goes. He didn't place at all with her though. I am sure it was tough on him as it was the first time doing Tim's patterns, which are much more difficult compared to what he was doing before. I probably placed where I should have. On the second day of trail he had a melt down both times with my trainer so I didn't even show him that day.
For my first big show, I guess we did okay. Of course I was hoping to do much better, but I learned what we needed to work on. Plus it was a lot for Woody to take in. We only ended up earning 2 points the whole show.
After Tampa, my trainer hauled to Vience for the first Fox Lea Circuit. I couldn't show due to military duty and had to fly home right after my horsemanship class. She advised me that Woody was much more relaxed in that environment and ended up placing second under both judges out of twenty in Green Trail the first day there.
Christina
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